Archive for November, 2011

How ironic that US, UK and Canadian governments are targeting Iran’s central banking system whilst on their own streets, militarised police are tear gassing people who protest peacefully against the obscenities and systemic dysfunction of Wall St.

Imposing sanctions upon Iran will harm the Iranian people too, maybe more so than damage the regime of Ahmadinejad and his acolytes. More could have been done to support Iranian people, and their Green Movement, during the dubious 2009 elections that saw Ahmadinejad retain power? It would be tragic for sanctions to have an outcome of strengthening the status quo.

If the Fear Trade gets its way yet again, conflict will do wonders for their military/industrial complex. Sure they’d be very happy to shift scrutiny away from coverage of Occupy/99% and Murdoch venality @ the Leveson Inquiry too. Errr, isn’t there a historiacal pattern of right wing conservative leaders in Britain and the US (Blair included) screaming “Iran” or “Iraq” as they consolidate their own ghastly power?

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How real is an Iranian nuclear threat? As rhetoric and momentum begin to build, the interpretOr will be probing more into this issue. After the ‘dodgy dossier’ that formed the rationale on the invasion of Iraq, should we not continue to question assumptions and pre-conceptions and scrutinise available evidence?

This is the question investigated by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, (see link below). Hersh was pivotal in breaking the stories of Vietnam War era My Lai massacre of 1968 (story broke ’69), and more recently the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during Gulf War II.

“There is no conclusive evidence that Iran has tried to build a bomb since 2003. The two most recent National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) on Iranian nuclear progress, representing the best judgment of the senior officers from all the major American intelligence agencies, have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any effort to build the bomb since 2003″

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“I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested… As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, ‘I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, ‘Move on, lady.’ And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head,” says Smith. “I walk over, and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, ‘Lady, do you want to get arrested?’ And I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘You want to get arrested?’ And he pushed me up against the wall.”

Retired New York Supreme Court Judge, Karen Smith, who worked as a legal observer Tuesday morning (22/11/11) in New York after the police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment, as reported by Democracy Now, the US’s largest community media initiative (not for profit and hot linked on our interpretOr blogroll).

(this is a hotlink, as headlined in bold, received directly by the interpretOr, from UK Cabinet Office, via Twitter 25/11/11)

Big PR number with David Cameron quotes and associated justifications. A press release really, that we’ll try to deconstruct and post on in the not too distant…David Cameron was PR head honcho for Carlton Television and is a Tory. This triumphant announcement mid phone hacking enquiry. NO PROTECTION has been a theme of the evidence thus far…

nanoo, nanoo...

Here’s an extract in the interim:

As part of this action plan Government will:

• Continue to build up in GCHQ and MOD our sovereign UK capability to detect and defeat high-end threats.

More tea, vicar? A Tory PM. Again. And there was even a woyal wedding wecently too. Wonder if this legislation was discussed by David Cameron at last year’s Christmas lunch get together with Brooks, Murdochs, Freuds, car salesmen who present a television franchise via the BBC? What a recipe for food poisoning!

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As flagged by the interpretOr August ’11, Jeff Madrick, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former economic correspondent to the New York Times, has recently published a metaanalysis of the origins, historical contexts and characteristics of financial crises.

Similarities to Eurozone abound, as the following quote reveals:

“Throughout history, financial crises have been generally similar to each other. An asset – land, housing, stocks, bonds and so on – rises in price, financial institutions lend to investors to buy more, and prices are driven to unsustainable levels. When the bubble bursts, investors sell assets to repay their loans, and prices fall further, often in panic.”

(Jeff Madrick, The Age of Greed, Alfred A Knopff, New York 2011)

the interpretOr also reveals that prior to the collapse of Lehman’s in 2008, Wall St had made trillions from trading sub-prime mortgages that were based on a giant ‘Ponzi’ scheme. How this was achieved was attributable to ongoing deregulation of the finance sector, tacitly permitting finance houses such as AIG and Countrywide to trade essentially unsecured mortgages to a rapacious sector – the buy-in, or incentive, was that sub-prime mortgages were subject to very high interest rates – these flimsy, high risk/high yield products were sold in bulk, providing massive, short-term and unsustainable earnings.

The ratings agencies, (see earlier interpretOr posts), S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, rated these bulk packages of very risky, partially unsecured mortgages, without elaborating on their inherent risks, weaknesses and unsustainability. European and other banks around the globe, bought into these toxic tranches and the resultant GFC was and is the outcome.

Now, we can add to the indictment: Euro crisis, ‘Silvio’ the clown, toxic sovereign debt…debt that was packaged and leveraged by…the same trio of ratings’ agencies. We’re nearly at 2012 and yet these same greedy, moronic, tragically influential ratings’ agencies are still calling the shots.

In late 2010, a Eurobond dealer broke away from the conformist consensus of his peers and spoke out against the ratings agencies (S&P, Moodys’ and Fitch). This lone voice had made it onto the BBC World Service and clearly stated that the ratings that these agencies had given toxic Greek, Spanish, Italian and Irish sovereign debt were incorrect. He called these government bonds as sub-junk trash. He derided the ratings as being as fetid as the subprime ‘miscalculations’ of 2008 and earlier.

Listeners were not told at the time that these same ratings agencies derive their revenue from the commission that they are paid by the merchant banks and governments that are issuing the bonds that they, the ratings’ agencies, rate.

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News Limited media editor Stephen Brook has taken a quote from Barack Obama and enthusiastically misused it as a defence of The Australian newspaper’s defence of the indefensible. Brook claimed Obama was speaking about press freedom when he said “Certain rights are universal, among them freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and freedom of citizens to choose their own leaders.” Obama added, “These are not American rights or Australian rights or Western rights. They are human rights. They stir the soul.”

Brook noted that Obama’s was alluding critically to China’s poor human rights record but Brook then deviated radically to claim that somehow this speech related to the record of Bob Brown. It is hard to think of anyone in Australian politics who has shown more courage and stood up more strongly for human rights than Bob Brown, but in the time honoured fashion of the Murdoch press, Brook was not letting facts get in the way of propaganda.

Brook was doing what he first learned at The Australian and that is media and marketing. He was trying to sell us the idea that the Murdoch media was being unfairly targeted by a media inquiry first mooted by Bob Brown. Poor little News Limited was being picked on according to those quoted by Brook. Famous boxer and former boss of News Ltd John Hartigan claims Julia Gillard was “looking for someone to blame.” Fairfax boss Greg Hywood while giving evidence at the inquiry was obviously mystified why we need an inquiry saying: “What is the issue?”

Unfortunately Brook didn’t read the other stories in the same November the 18th edition of the Australian, as one article on the front page is titled, “Fairfax four facing probe by MP’s.” This article deals with allegations of illegally hacking into an electoral database which is being investigated by Victoria Police.

The previous day an article entitled “Accused cop read terror raid file,” revealed that a Victorian police detective was committed to trial for wilful misconduct endangering the lives of others and interfering with the administration of justice. It appears from the article that the detective was illegally passing highly secret information on terrorists, who were later convicted of planning a lethal attack on Holsworthy military base, to a senior journalist Cameron Stewart from The Australian.

While pretending to champion free speech The Australian uses Daniel Pipes as a writer on Middle East issues. Pipes is well known for his viciously anti- Arab prejudice. Pipes advocated collective punishment of Palestinians by proposing that when a Palestinian commits an act of terrorism his whole village should be obliterated. As a project of his Middle East Forum, Pipes set up campus watch which created a McCarthy style website dossier that encouraged US university students and academics to report lecturers who made any criticism of Israel. He used this information to try have these lecturers blacklisted.

If the above instances of wrongdoing are not enough, the fact that the Murdoch press is not reporting the news accurately and in fact deliberately and regularly misrepresents the true picture of climate change and thereby offends the other face of free speech, that is the responsibility to tell the truth.

The climate change campaign is a malignant feature of the Murdoch media empire that has terrible consequences for all who occupy this planet. If it succeeds in its aims of preventing action on the greatest threat ever faced by mankind it will go down in history as the greatest example of infamy toward humanity and as an enemy of truth and thereby free speech.

23 November 2011 is the inaugural International Day to End Impunity

more than 500 journalists
have been killed in the last 10 years.

In nine out of 10 cases, the
murderers have gone free.

The International Day to End Impunity is a call to action to demand justice for those who have been killed for exercising their right to freedom of expression and shed light on the issue of impunity.

Every day around the world journalists, musicians, artists, politicians, and free expression advocates are being silenced, often with no investigation or consequences to their persecutors.

Impunity has always been ranked as a top priority for IFEX members, (International Freedom of Expression Exchange: The global network for free expression). So it came as no surprise that at the 2011 IFEX Strategy Conference in Beirut, Lebanon, IFEX members announced they were joining forces to launch the first ever International Day to End Impunity on 23 November, the anniversary of the single deadliest attack on journalists in recent history: the 2009 Maguindanao massacre in the Philippines.

This initiative is applauded by the interpretOr and many of our friends and links: Index on Censorship, Reporters Without Borders et al.

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Ok. Mr Woods, as you know, this interview is likely to be reaching planets that are not entirely familiar with your profession. Can you describe a typical working day?

– Umm, yes. Yes, sir, I can describe such a day. I tend to wear leeesure slacks, v neck jumpers and I smack golf balls around in the open air. I travel the world on what is known as the ‘tour’ and compete with other players.

Do many people do a similar job, back there on Earth?

– Well, for many people here, golf is a game, a hobby. Fun on the weekend, or during the week, with clients and associates. For me, golf is my life, my passion…kinda almost a religion.

Mr Woods, are you pretty happy on US$1,000,000 per week?

– My performance is significantly down YOY and I have a lot of hard work to do moving forwards. Quite frankly, at the end of the day, I’m a little disappointed…

How does your income compare with other Earthlings? It seems that this game, ‘golf’ is highly valued, it must be essential to the lives of fellow humans?

– Umm, quite frankly, moving forwards, it is an important game. I’m an ambassador for it.

Mr Woods, that’s fine, but I will ask you again: How does your income compare with other Earthlings?

– At the end of the day, I’m very happy with my lot, though as I said earlier, Breeonezlet, My performance is significantly down YOY…

Mr Woods, thank you. We’d better leave it there for now. Best wishes with your ‘moving forwards golf’ and we appreciate your time.

Well, viewers, that was Mr Woods, Earth’s leading ‘golfer’. As we saw, he seemed reluctant to put his income into perspective – this trait has been a theme of this series on ‘Earth: roles, incomes and the future’. We’ll go now to Earth’s ‘United Nations’ and see how Mr Woods’ income compares with average Earthlings:

More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day.

Another 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. Poverty in the developing world, however, goes far beyond income poverty. It means having to walk more than one mile everyday simply to collect water and fire- wood; it means suffering diseases that were eradicated from rich countries decades ago. Every year eleven million children die—most under the age of five and more than six million from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

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Embattled Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has today made a dramatic plea, reversing his earlier mantra. He is very concerned about the “well founded fear of persecution” that characterises the plight of the cream of the world’s elite sailors:

“Look, at the end of the day, umm, quite frankly, just don’t stop the boats.”

Echoing his call are organisers of the World “don’t stop the boats” championships (that are not really going to be held in Fremantle), but the brash, new port city of Perth. Sponsors and supporters of the World “don’t stop the boats” championships include ratings’ agencies Poor Standards, Mooody’s and Filth.

Meanwhile in other news, Australian icon, legend and World Knitting champion, Greg Normal, has announced a smashing new sponsorship deal with prestige watch brand ‘Red Dot: depuis 1988’, and there are hopes that he may have the opportunity to defend his title at the Malcolm Day Stadium in Kwinana, early 2012…

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The argument about fracking and its impact on water, environmental and health matters is very important but it is obscuring a greater issue for this country and indeed the world.

State governments on the East coast are arguing that hydraulic fracturing to extract gas is vital for future development, as the Bass Strait oil and gas fields are reaching the end of their lives and their will be a shortage in supply in the near future. However, allowing fracking will have little impact on state supplies because the private companies drilling for gas sell their gas to the world market as quickly as they can to maximise their profits. They will not eke it out or save it for state governments unless they pay upfront.

In fact the declining Bass Strait oilfields show that a new approach is needed to ensure that we do have dedicated energy supplies for our industries, for transport and households to use until such time we can replace them with renewables or other new forms of energy at competitive prices.

After urging from the Greens, who called for the implementation of a comprehensive strategic energy use policy,the Carpenter Government in Western Australia put in place a weak arrangement guaranteeing state supply for households and industry. I have not seen any evidence of any other state governments securing their states energy futures and lots of evidence that what they actually want is the mining royalties to prop up their current budgets.

Rapidly selling our energy supplies at the current rate may make our governments look like good financial managers, but it is a sleight of hand trick digging up money in the form of hydrocarbons and swapping it for paper money. The longer the oil and gas sits in the ground, the more valuable it becomes. The quicker we dig it up the less we will get to sell it. What point is the quick buck now if in twenty years down the track we have not secured energy supplies for local use? What manufacturing, farming and transport or even mining will be possible?

The Chinese are not so stupid with their energy supplies. Rather than using up local gas and oil, they are buying up energy all over the globe at very good prices and keeping their reserves as reserves.

There are some other stupendous challenges as well and the most pressing is food production. It has been estimated that the current world population of 6 billion has only been possible because of the use of nitrogenous fertilisers. Without nitrogenous fertilisers the highest population achievable is around 3 billion people and most of the added nitrogen comes from a process using natural gas.

By 2050 when world population reaches around 9 billion, our gas supplies will be dwindling and highly expensive. Six billion people will be facing starvation if natural gas is not available or affordable to make nitrogenous fertilisers. If you think we are currently seeing market failures, wait till 2050 arrives and we are without adequate oil and gas supplies for our survival. It is an act of criminal stupidity of our governments to not deal with these issues now because they continue to hold to a fundamental and religious belief that the market will fix it. Now is time for action not for waiting on Godot.

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French news service AFP (Agence France Presse) are today reporting that artist Ai Weiwei has been buoyed by ‘a huge wave of solidarity’ involving 30,000 other Chinese people raising 8.5 milion Yuan to support his very fragile predicament. This is a situation whereby freedom of expression in contemporary China is the core issue.

In addition to his thought provoking and magnificent art, Ai Weiwei had investigated the needless deaths of school children who died in shonkily built schools that had collapsed in earthquakes of recent years. Icon of art became enemy of the state. Consume away, if you can, but whatever you do, don’t question…

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Fear trade

move will

trigger

arms race

This appears as a headline in today’s Australian, and laid out as above. The “Fear trade” is an apt, if not wholly unintentional, description of many a ‘News‘ headline. The Fear trade was integral to successive re-elections of John Winston H. The Fear trade is a proud sponsor of Mr AB on Botty (anag.) The Fear trade is cunning, baffling and powerful – it manages to convince human beings that they should pay it king’s ransoms to incarcerate other human beings who have done nothing more than take urgent steps, during times of conflict, to run away from carnage.

How disappointing that the Fear trade seems to be so darn successful. Phone hacking of bereaved families is a Fear trade norm; selling wars is too…uranium, as well.

Barack Obama seemed to be a vocal critic of the Fear trade, before becoming US President. A proposed US ‘Pacific Century’ is flagged by his acolytes and sponsored by…the Fear trade. Is nothing sacred, for friggin’ christsakes!

Here’s what the late, great and humanistic John Steinbeck had to say about the Fear trade:

“Now for so many years we have suckled on fear and fear alone, and there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty and deceit and suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear, faceless, stupid, sarcomic terror.”

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So Julia, you’re saying that India will promise that Australian uranium will not be used for nuclear weapons. If that is the case why will India not sign the nuclear weapon non proliferation treaty? To slightly adapt an old Welsh saying, “I think you are leeking in our pockets while the fireworks are exploding around our ears”.

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The drumbeats are growing louder summoning the howling dogs of war to assemble on the borders of Persia. These are not Assyrians whose spears gleam in the moonlight but Americans astride black vultures carrying cannisters of death.

They have been called to assembly by the Invisible Giant of Jerusalem who points his menacing finger accusingly at Tehran and through deceptive lips breathes the great lie that is not permitted to be questioned.

The Persians have a great weapon and are a threat to me and the whole world he says, while concealing his secret arsenal of annihilation under a blanket of ancient guilt. Directing attention away from a history of kidnapping and murder and theft of lands, carried out in the name persecution.

This is the same great lie that saw death rain down on Baghdad and infected America with disbelief and loss of trust in its own destiny. This is the lie that enrages and motivates its victims and enemies to seek a bloody revenge.

While its leaders begin the chant of war and the captains of industry line their treasuries with Persian gold America’s people are on the streets demanding truth and justice. And the invisible giant points the way.

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In cognitive psychology, dichotic listening is a procedure commonly used to investigate selective attention in the auditory system. In dichotic listening, two different auditory stimuli (usually speech) are presented to the participant simultaneously, one to each ear, normally using a set of headphones. Participants are asked to attend to one or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message….

Page 1 of the Weekend Australian (12-13 Nov ’11) had leads from the paper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, and political editor, Denis Shanahan. The messages were mixed and perhaps even ‘dichotic’:

“There will be no military bases (US) in Australia”: Greg Sheridan, 1st paragraph of p1

“Mr Obama and Julia Gillard will announce a new joint US-Australia military base in Darwin”: Denis Shanahan, p1

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In late 2010, a Eurobond dealer broke away from the conformist consensus of his peers and spoke out against the ratings agencies (S&P, Moodys’ and Fitch). This lone voice had made it onto the BBC World Service and clearly stated that the ratings that these agencies had given toxic Greek, Spanish, Italian and Irish sovereign debt were incorrect. He called these government bonds as sub-junk trash. He derided the ratings as being as fetid as the subprime ‘miscalculations’ of 2008 and earlier.

Listeners were not told at the time that these same ratings agencies derive their revenue from the commission that they are paid by the merchant banks and governments that are issuing the bonds that they, the ratings’ agencies, rate.

Many Italians were blissfully unaware of this atrocious conflict of interest. Oh, but who owned the bulk of their media? Well, ‘Silvio’, the clown. That’s who…

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News has just come in that reveals why Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlustonni was forced to resign. He has been snubbed by IMF officials. Mr Berlustonni had invited leading IMF figures to one of his famous Bunga Bunga parties but after looking around at what Silvio had provided, the executives after a brief animated discussion with Mr Berlustonni left in a huff.

When asked what had caused their departure, Silvio told the press pack that he had mistaken their purpose. “I thought they were on the same wavelength as me as I thought IMF stood for Immature Maiden Fanciers but I had underestimated them”, he said. “In fact they wanted to see much more pain and suffering. They wanted people tied down for long periods and punished. Why was I not told their initials mean Interminable Masochistic Fetishists. This totally demoralised me and left me feeling impotent and unable to keep on screwing Italy as I had in the past.”

The interpretOr’s London media sources confirming that Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons (UK) recalling James Murdoch amid revelations from jailed former News of the World Royal Editor, Clive Goodman, that “hacking widely discussed” at the paper from 2007 onwards.

Adding to the context of this second Common’s appearance for James Murdoch are the additional revelations of the surveilance of lawyers acting for phone hacking victims of News International‘s now defunct News of the World. In addition, as reported previously @ the interpretOr (18th Aug 2011), the Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons are also aware of the following…

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Italian clown and children’s entertainer, ‘Silvio’, was again in the spotlight yesterday. Following on from his recent revival of dadaist piece, ‘Bling, Bling’, he has been presented with the final tab for his notorious ‘wonga-wOnga’ parties and it’s reportedly even larger than his ego.

BBC WorldService carried a report this weekend of a final party tab of US$2,000,000,000,000 – errr, that’s $2 TRILLION.

There’s breaking news of tens of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets of Rome this Sunday morning:

Deutche Welle : http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15513611,00.html

Silvio’s wOnga buddies, an elusive group known as ‘CRAPA’ – covertratings’ agency party arseholes – were unavailable for comment.

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With his orange tan fading to a more golden hue, noted Italian clown and children’s entertainer, ‘Silvio’, was again in the spotlight yesterday.

As the G20 wrapped up in Cannes, ‘Silvio’ entertained onlookers with a rare return to street performance! As delighted fans gathered ‘al fresco’, he relished in reviving his dadaist masterpiece ‘Bling, Bling’. With its’ existential themes and imagery, comparisons have been made with Godot…

A clearly delighted ‘Silvio’ also quoted an extract from ‘Bling’ to the throng of media:

“I’ve dreamed all my life of making these reforms to the economy, but it hasn’t been possible because of the socialists and communists,”

(‘Silvio’ 4 nOv, 2011)

His revival of ‘Bling, Bling’ is proudly sponsored by Goldmen Sucks and the ratings agency Poor Standards.

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It is clear to almost everyone on the planet that the curtain should be drawn on America’s war in Afghanistan. While there was once a valid argument for the USA to retaliate against the Al Qaeda, the time has long gone when military activity improved security or improved the lives of Afghanis.

As President Karzai has clearly spelt out, Afghanistan’s economic and security future lies with making alliances with its superpower neighbours China and India, as well as Pakistan and even Iran. Clearly the Pakistani Military at least is very uncomfortable with a dominant Western presence in the region and has less inclination to deal with cross border insurgents while Western Forces remain.

Now that Pakistan and India have formed a trading alliance and China is seeking to widen its economic reach, the quickest way to peace is for the West to get out. This loss of status may not suit US objectives but its allies interests would be better served by getting out now

Those Afghani troops who are turning on their trainers may not be Taliban or Al Qaeda. They may be motivated by the wishes of the Afghan Government or more likely the will of the people. Australia should be bringing back our troops and thanking them for a job well done and it would be sensible for other countries to do the same.

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Julian Assange appears to be bound for Sweden despite not having been charged with any offence. His extradition raises a number of questions that should be examined. The first question is why can’t the Swedish prosecutor ask her questions in the UK? Why is it necessary for him to be in Sweden before he is charged? Can and will the English Judiciary limit Assanges extradition to Sweden only?

A more important matter is, will Sweden be simply a stepping stone in Assanges rendition to the United States or even Gauntanamo Bay? If such proceedings begin what action if any will be taken by the Australian government to ensure Assange’s safety, legal rights and freedom? Will the Gillard Government stick up for an Australian citizen or tug the forelock once again?

Gillard has a poor record on Assange and has already declared him guilty of crimes and stayed silent on seemingly illegal attacks on WikiLeaks by banks and credit card companies.

She may lose further support from the Australian public if she plays Pontius Pilate in the Assange case. Furthermore she will be setting a low value on Australian citizenship.

Highly emotive words. Having worked with refugees, this interpretOr would like to add a few more that are characteristic of people that have had no choice but to flee the well founded fear of persecution:

‘Moral crisis at The Australian’ may be more apt a headline, for in this same edition we may also read that five refugee children have just drowned. There are no words adequate to describe such tragedy…

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The United Nations vote on admittance of Palestine to membership of UNESCO has shown that the childish petulance displayed by the United States is not confined to the Republican Party.

After the USA and Israel could only gather a dozen supporters they have not only taken their bat and ball and stomped off home but it would seem they, and probably Israel have gone on a vandalism spree. They spitefully retaliated against the Palestinian people by attacking their internet systems and against the rest of UNESCO’s members by reneging on a $60 million donation. Was this money actually a bribe?

Why have the USA and Israel been such ungracious losers? Is it because they know they are being left behind by world opinion? How long can they maintain the illusion that a tiny significantly imported Israeli population should imprison and ignore the prior rights of land tenure, and trash the land and human rights of a much larger native population?

The Australian Government needs to be included in this small band of intransigent countries who it would seem, are incapable of voting in a way that reflects the will of their own people when that conflicts with the selfish aims of the USA. For Australia it is time to be a true friend but not an obsequious servant of the USA. We should always be supportive of genuine causes and difficulties being tackled by our long time ally but we should not aid bogus wars or unjust actions as is occurring in Palestine.

It is a nonsense for the US to say they favour a two state solution in Palestine/Israel when their actions are totally at odds with their words. Sure they claim that they want to have an agreement between Israel and Palestine before agreeing to Palestinian statehood, but this is simply an endless delaying tactic. Israel’s continuing theft of Palestinian land ensures every passing day makes it harder to make an agreement that is fair and equitable to Palestinians. If the USA was serious about a negotiated settlement leading to Palestinian statehood it would put a stop to this ongoing injustice.

What should become obvious to the USA is that their failed policies on Israel and Palestine means they are becoming marginalised not only in the Middle East but their shrinking support in the UN shows that many of their allies are fed up supporting such flawed policy and unjust outcomes. The worlds populace in East and West and countries of the North and South have had a gut-full of this endlessly damaging and degradingly stupid strategy that spreads violence and hatred around the planet.

When will we get a USA President and Congress that has the courage to stand up to the powerful and skilful Jewish lobby. Conversely in order to maintain US hegemony in the region will the USA attempt to undermine any attempt by the newly democratic Arab states to build strong peaceful relationships with their neighbours . If so they may find the rest of the world growing tired of violent US adventures and at a time they are losing there economic dominance this will diminish their military and economic reach and ability.

Surely it is time for the USA to bite the bullet and face their greatest current challenge which is to demand Israel comply with UN rulings on handing back Palestinian lands and end their occupation. Their current policy trajectory will end not only in further bloodshed but in further decline in America’s influence and respect. As Ghandi might have said, until Israel ensures that Palestinians achieve justice and a dignified existence then Israeli’s will not achieve theirs goal of a peaeful homeland either.